Memorial Bridge (47 page)

"I needed a book." Richard smiled at Archbishop Barry. It surprised him, the pleasure to be had in a smooth, automatic lie in the prelate's very face. What a total shit I am, he thought happily.

"What book?" his father asked.

"Tertullian," Richard answered, on a roll.

"Ah, the Fathers of the Church," Father Simms put in. "Don't believe all that those Jesuits say about the Fathers." He winked. "They'll try to make you think Ignatius was one of them."

But his own father was not playing. Richard's nonchalance about schoolwork had long been a sore point with him. "You're not taking patristics this semester. You're not taking any theology course, are you?"

As if the word itself were a trap door falling open under him, Richard grabbed at it. "Theology?"

"Are you?"

"No, sir."

His father, staring at him coldly now, had cut right through the wall of counterfeit cheer behind which Richard had quite deliberately taken cover. A sledgehammer smashing through plaster would not have jolted him more, as he saw how close he'd come to pulling the sham off, home for an hour's cake and happy-talk, then heading out into the night and its secret, a true liar.

His father's eyes conveyed implicitly the command to come to the point, and perversely the image that flashed before Richard was that of Father Gavin staring at him across the stretch of Gaston Hall, like God.

"I came home..." he began, then faltered. Groping, he looked at the priest sitting next to him, then across at the archbishop. The crimson tab at the prelate's Adam's apple caught his eye, then the gold cord curving across his chest, the cross hidden inside his black coat. The clerical garb struck Richard for the first time as a uniform, just like his father's. He glanced along the table, three men in uniform; he saw his father's silver stars. "The world in uniform"—the line from
Gatsby
popped into his head—"and at a kind of moral attention forever."

His mother wanted none of this. She was happy just to have him home for a minute, no questions asked. He let his gaze rest on her. "I came home because I had some questions."

"What about?" she asked, but so sweetly and so full of womanly concern that he realized she'd misunderstood. He had told her on the phone the week before that there was a girl he wanted her to meet, and he sensed now that she thought that was what had brought him home. He wanted to reach to her and touch the wisps of reddish gray hair that floated by her ear. No, Mom, he wanted to say, not the girl. He knew how worried she was for him, that he get it right with girls, but that was because she thought he had inherited his father's perfect inhibition. Girls had as little to do with this as fucking Tertullian.

"What, darling?" she prompted.

"I don't think this is a good time..." It maddened him, how he had so preempted their concern. Was his need so obvious, so pathetic? They were waiting for him to explain. They were looking at him as if he were a hurt child. He was filled with loathing for himself.

His father said, "What's up, Rich?"

At last he turned toward him, but Richard saw a different image of his father. In his senior year at St. Anselm's, he had looked up from the mud of their opponent's end zone to see him—in that blue uniform, those silver stars—leaning against the fender of his staff car, smoking. His father had made it to the game after all! Had seen him score! The driver had pulled the car right onto the cinder track in front of the stands, the only car there. It didn't matter that when Richard looked over again a moment later—now from the huddle before the point-after play—his father was gone. That disappearance was part of what made the memory wonderful.

"Dad," he began, "I wanted to ask..."

His father's expression now, as at St. Anselm's field that day, was supremely self-satisfied, a manifestation to Richard not only of his father's absolute inviolability, but of his confidence that his son could simply never disappoint him.

"...about Vietnam."

"What about it?"

For a moment Richard saw his father not as calm but as smug. If this is so easy for you, why is it so hard for me? To his surprise, what he felt again, as earlier toward the Jesuit, was anger.

"I want to ask you about intelligence officers and what they do to get their information."

"Well, I'm the man to ask."

His father's tone, if anything, was even more controlled, which made Richard feel crazy. Then, when he saw Archbishop Barry reach a sympathetic hand across to cover his mother's hand, he almost reached over to push it away.

"I'm talking about Vietnam."

"I know you are."

"Do intelligence officers try to make the Vietcong prisoners talk?"

"Sure." Sean Dillon nodded, still relaxed, but was there a faint charge in the way he reached for the sterling silver cigarette box? He tapped a Camel once, then put it in his mouth.

"Do they sometimes do things they shouldn't do?"

"Like what?" Sean Dillon snapped the lighter and took the flame.

"Pushing them out of helicopters."

"Helicopters?" Sean narrowed his eyes, perhaps because of the smoke. "You mean helicopters in the air? Airborne?"

"Yes."

"Don't be ridiculous, Richard."

"Do they use electric wires on people?"

"Electric wires?"

"Yes. Attached to their bodies."

"You mean torture?" Sean's breath rasped out of him, and it was clear that despite his earlier air of paternal omniscience, his son had stunned him.

"I guess so, yes. Torture." Now Richard was finding his own balance, and words which moments before had been literally unspeakable came out in a rush. "Do your people in Vietnam torture prisoners? That's my question. Do our soldiers kill women and children? Do our airplanes bomb schools and hospitals?"

"Richard!" Cass pulled her hand back from the archbishop's. "What do you—"

"Let him finish," Sean said.

"I am finished. You have to tell me, Dad."

The silence settled on the room, a vacuum. Their oxygen had been sucked away, especially the general's. He had been completely blind-sided, and now was finding it impossible to pretend otherwise. The two clergymen had folded their hands on the table, mirroring each other. They sat now with bowed heads, pious and invisible. Cass glanced once at the door to the kitchen, afraid that Mack might have heard.

"You're right, Rich," Sean said finally. "I do have to tell you." His face was flushed. Though he tapped his cigarette as if pronouncing on the White Sox pennant chances, his voice had become tight and cold. "I'm glad you came home with this. I'm glad you came to me. Obviously some of the wrong people have been telling you—"

"A priest told me these things, and a lot besides. A priest!" Richard heard the note of triumph in his own voice, and underscored it by looking toward the archbishop. "A moral theologian! He said the escalation in Vietnam is immoral."

"On what grounds?" the archbishop asked sharply.

"The Just War Theory."

Sean Dillon waved his hand dismissively. "I can apply the Just War principles as well as anyone." He plunged into the argument with relief. Argument he could handle, discourse, dissertation. "It is immoral not to resist an unprovoked act of aggression. In order to apply moral principles, Richard, you have to start with accurate factual information. That's where these antiwar polemicists go wrong every time, including your so-called theologian. Where does he get his information?"

"He had letters from GIs. Letters they wrote home, letters to parents and girlfriends, describing terrible things. These were eyewitnesses. They said that intelligence officers—"

Sean shook his head so vigorously that Richard stopped.

"Terrible things happen in war, son. Some few soldiers disgrace themselves and bring shame on their country, but that in no way—"

"That's what I said, Dad. I defended you!"

"Not me, Rich. You didn't defend me. I don't need defending on this score. My people don't commit murder and they don't torture."

Shame? It shamed Richard to realize that having defended his father, he had just accused him. My people don't commit murder! It shamed Richard to have required such a statement from his father.

Son and father. Father and son. They sat frozen, locked together by what they were seeing in each other's eyes.

Finally Sean said, "I know all about those letters, Richard. The famous letters home. They are lies. They are fabrications. Some were written to congressmen, the gullible ones. They use information supplied by the Communists as part of their propaganda blitz. I've had to testify about it on the Hill."

"The letters are lies?"

"Where did the priest say he got them?"

"He didn't."

"Has your priest been to Vietnam himself?"

"No. I mean, not that—"

"DIA has charge of intelligence for this war, Richard."

"I know. That's why I—"

"And if murder or torture were committed by men in my command, do you think I would know it?"

"Yes."

"And what do you think would happen?"

"You would court-martial them."

"That's right. We interrogate prisoners, Richard. We don't coddle them. What armies learn from the men they capture saves lives. Do you understand that?"

"Yes."

"But there are rules. Strict rules. Rules set at Geneva. Rules we abide by absolutely. Do you think the other side abides by them?"

"I don't—"

"They do not. The Vietminh have murdered fifteen thousand village elders in the last year. The GIs who have been captured have been routinely tortured. The Reds torture our boys to death, Richard. They are a vicious, evil enemy. They are Communists. They have no morality. Saigon had just begun to make headway against them when the North Vietnamese came to the Vietminh rescue. Now there are tens of thousands of North Vietnamese regulars, fully equipped and heavily armed, in South Vietnam. What is the moral thing for us to do? Walk away? Pretend we don't know? Send flowers? Let the Iron Curtain close around another country? The South Vietnamese are people who have thrown off the Japanese and the French because of their love for freedom. Are we supporters of that freedom or not? You loved President Kennedy. So did I. What did he say?"

"He said we would support freedom."

"And that's what we're doing. We are supporting the South Vietnamese. The U.S. soldiers who are there are only guards at our bases. We don't send GIs or marines on offensive operations. Do you know that? And as for the air force, you mentioned hospitals and schools as our targets. That's slander, Richard, and it saddens me terribly to hear you repeat it. Pilots of ours, men only a little older than you, have died in
antiaircraft fire they could have easily avoided if they hadn't been trying to make sure their bombs fell on military targets, and not on schools and hospitals. I know about this, Richard. Do you hear me? I—"

Richard said nothing. His father saddened? What Richard saw was his reined fury. His father had checked himself, but Richard knew what he'd been about to say: I know what targets our bombers hit because I help to pick them.

"Do you hear me?" Sean Dillon repeated.

"Yes." Richard answered miserably, feeling misused and misunderstood. To himself he added, It's what I said, it's what I said at Georgetown.

Sean snuffed his cigarette out and looked up at Cass. "Ring for coffee, would you?"

Instead of hitting the buzzer buried in the rug by her foot, Cass stood up and served the coffee herself. Once more a cruel silence had settled on the room. As she poured for Sean she leaned to whisper, "It wasn't him."

Unfortunately Archbishop Barry heard her, and her statement prompted him to raise his eyes, which fell on Richard. He asked, "Who was this priest?"

Richard felt the pulse in his head roar. "What? I'm sorry?"

"The priest who read these fabricated letters to you. Who was he?" The archbishop too was angry. Richard Dillon wasn't the only person whose baptism he'd presided over. Archbishop Barry had been associated with the President's daughter's conversion to Catholicism, and he was to officiate at her upcoming wedding at the Shrine. The archbishop considered himself a personal friend of the President's. Was he to take the news neutrally that a priest of his archdiocese was giving aid and comfort to the great enemy, not only of America but of God? "What is this priest's name?"

Richard looked helplessly toward his father. Sean Dillon said nothing. Not a muscle moved in his face. The backs of Richard's eyes began to sting, and to his horror he realized it was possible he would cry. But no. No.

He thought of crashing through the door behind him, but then Sergeant Mack would see him. No.

Somehow he summoned up an act of will. Looking back on this moment, he would understand that it had changed him. And no. He would not cry.

"I forget," he said, and he knew all at once that, despite his father's authority and the archbishop's, despite the anger that he himself had felt toward the hapless, duped Father Gavin—Priest Discovers War Is Hell—he would not now or ever tell his name.

"A moral theologian, you said." This was Father Simms, an effete detective. "At Georgetown?"

Richard shook his head. "I heard him at Dupont Circle this afternoon, a peace rally. The priest who spoke said he was from Massachusetts, I think. Or Minnesota."

"You were at a peace rally?" Sean Dillon asked quietly.

Richard looked at his father. He almost said, I was just there as a photographer, taking pictures. But that was the truth, and what he needed was another lie.

Richard had rarely felt this confused, so beaten silly by his own impulses, first this way, then that. For an instant he saw the face of that Vietnamese girl whose photograph he had kicked—of all things to kick! He believed that the people imaged in photographs were present in them somehow, what the Hopis believed. Photographs were like sacraments. What had possibly justified his violence toward that image especially?

"Yes," he said. "I was."

His father showed no reaction; not a muscle moved in his face, and his eyes were simply dead. But Richard felt, in his lie, that he'd kicked someone again. But his father? Oh, fuck.